Sunday, January 22, 2017

I don't know 'bout you, but the super-long car chase/shoot-out that opens Dangerous Seductress better have a decent pay off, because that was seven of the most painful minutes of cinema I have ever endured. Sure, it's seven painful minutes of hyper-insane Indonesian cinema, but there's only so much H. Tjut Djalil (Lady Terminator) can bring to car chases and shoot outs (two of the most overplayed tropes in movie history). Of course, given that this review is currently in the process of being hatched, it should come as no surprise that the film delivers on so many levels. And begins to do so immediately after the pink getaway car belonging to three jewel thieves crashes in front of the Jakarta mansion belonging to Linda (Kristin Anin), a blonde fashion model. While the police do their best to collect the mangled body parts that litter the crash scene, a severed finger manages to allude them. And you know what that means? Right, the finger is absorbed by an ancient compact mirror, and then burrows itself into ground. After some mild rumbling, a skeleton emerges. Slowly but surely, the skeleton begins to grow flesh. Eventually the skeleton transforms into... "The Evil Queen."

Don't worry, I'm sure nothing bad will happen. I mean, so what if there's a "dangerous seductress" loitering on the front lawn of the suburban Jakarta mansion belonging to a blonde fashion model? Just as long as a Guinean anthropologist doesn't give the blonde fashion model a book about Indonesian mysticism for her birthday, and just as long as the blonde fashion model's blonde sister, Susan (Tonya Lawson) doesn't decide to read from the book out loud while standing in front of a mirror, everything should be fine.

However, things don't turn out fine, now do they? Or do they? Unless you're proponent of heterosexual men and their equally heterosexual penises, everything actually will be fine. You see, when everything I stated earlier does happen, this leads to many deaths within Jakarta's burgeoning douchebag community. Boo-hoo? I don't think so.

And like said, it all happens thanks to a weird con-flux of events. In a way, you could blame Susan's asshole rapist of a boyfriend. While "The Evil Queen" is drinking dogs blood on Linda's Jakarta front lawn, Susan is trying not to get raped by her asshole rapist boyfriend on the dining room table. Thanks to the shoddy quality of the table (it collapses under the weight of the violence), Susan manages to escape.

Desperate for help, Susan turns to her sister in Jakarta, who is celebrating her birthday with her husband Bob (John Warom), a decent human being with suspect taste in blazers. Inviting Susan to stay with her in Jakarta, Linda helps her battered and bruised sister recover (her attack was extremely brutal).

It's when Linda goes to Bali for a photo-shoot and leaves Susan all alone that things begin to go nuts. Now, I don't know what compelled Susan to read that book on Indonesian mysticism aloud like that (I didn't get a strong likes to read books vibe from her). But nonetheless, the passages she reads lead to her becoming the unwitting pawn of... "The Evil Queen."

Was I annoyed that Susan's post-possession dress-up montage was three minutes shorter than the obnoxious car chase/shoot-out that opens the film? A little. That being said, I think most people, well, most sane people, will agree that Susan's dress-up montage is fucking fantastic. Seriously, I lost track of how many different outfits she tries on.

She even tries on red stockings!!!

Eventually settling on a little black dress, Susan hits the streets in search of sustenance. And by "sustenance," I mean douchebag blood.

I know it says that this film was shot in the mid-1990s. But everything practically oozes the mid-1980s. Maybe it's because Jakarta was a little behind when it came to keeping up with the latest fashions. Or maybe Jakarta circa 1995 is just plain awesome. Either way, the scenes in the nightclub contained everything I look for in a good club sequence.

And there's no better leggy floozy than Susan herself. A thousand times hotter than her sister, Susan and her sturdy legs and ample breasts make short work of the heterosexual men in this joint.

Settling on a lanky fuck in grey bikini briefs, Susan allows this oily twerp to escort her back to his boat so that she can extract his blood. Using a fishhook at first, Susan ultimately decides to use the spiky heel on her shoe to withdraw his... crimson nectar. Yum.

While I feel bad using the term "douchebag" to describe what are essentially man-shaped globs of yuppie scum, those three guys Susan lures to a meat locker on the outskirts of town were definitely douchebags. Again, using her sturdy legs and ample breasts, Susan manages to score three bodies worth of blood for... "The Evil Queen."

You might be thinking to yourself: Is anyone trying to stop Susan's reign of righteous terror? Well, there's this cop. But he seems more interested in hassling Linda, who he thinks might have stole some jewels from the corpses of the jewel thieves. But other than that, it looks like Susan and... "The Evil Queen" are pretty much in the clear as far as achieving their goals. Which is, I think, to restore... "The Evil Queen" to her original glory. And with Susan, a walking, sort of talking blood bag in heels, on her side, they should be unstoppable.

Of course, since not many movies openly promote the advancement of evil, I'm totally sure someone is going to come along to fuck up their plans. In meantime, however, we can relish in how close Susan came to undermining heterosexuality in Jakarta. Think about it. All she needed to do was kill two or maybe three more guys, and women throughout the city would have been free of unwanted harassment for, like, forever. Okay, maybe not forever. But a solid two weeks for sure.

It should go without saying, but Dangerous Seductress delivers the brain-sick and then some. The film is sexy, gory and the special effects are... uh, let's just say, they're uniquely Indonesian. Personally, I would have trimmed the opening car chase/shoot-out scene and done the same to Linda's Bali scenes; don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the bikini modeling scenes, it's just that the parasailing stuff was tedious. But other than that, the film is a glorious piece of trash.